Writing Beyond…

Wisp

I’ve always been afraid of the dark. I can almost remember: born into a flood of light, kindling sparks where smoke once began.

To go back to the dark is to never exist in the fray against the pulse in time.

This wisp of smoke that rides the colourless air has come from a fire that could burn the world into ash. But the flame that has begotten me has left me swirling upward towards and beyond the limits of space.

And I fear. I fear the unknown path and the stretches of a horizon that can never be attained. I fear the colourlessness and the evanescence. I must return to the mother that has borne me, the ever-hungry flame of darkness that was my beginning, and shall be my feared end.

But all I am is smoke.

And like a ghost in the fog, this wisp wanders unseeing and unseen.

I was banished to the Outward too long ago to be able to recall a vivid image. My eyes are so used to the smoke that color and sound seem nothing but a part of the darkness that covers me. I feel eternally wafting, a cloud among The Cloud.

My awakening happened on at a time like no other. I recall being swept into the current of smoke, shooting and spiraling away.

Years, or perhaps eons passed while aimless and reckless I was shot into oblivion.

And suddenly, oh so suddenly, just as that spark that started life, a light so unknown erupted.

It deluged within me, slipping past my will.

II.

Once the light shines through you, you are forever altered.

The darkness that has consumed you and become you for so long becomes your enemy, and you begin to rage and storm against it.

But in the wars you wage against yourself, there can only be one victor.

For years, perhaps eons, I scoffed at clouds and rode the air and painted grey in colours fair.

I was a spark in the dark set alight, and I seethed and I fumed and I danced and I twirled. I glowed and I flowed as I rode the air, setting alight the universe whole.

I could not see, but what is sight to a light that raged and dimmed the stars?

I dashed among the wisps that seemed never-ending, and I rejoiced in my colours of reds and yellows glowing within the smoke of grey.

And finally.

Finally.

I banished the dark.

And I ordained myself a conqueror.

While around me the wanderers wandered, twirling and forever hung in blades in the air.

But just as a spark is blown by the winds, the brightest of flames must meet its end.

From out the smokes, a darkness unseen came to me near.

It crept in paces gently trod.

Silently slow, it coiled around and within me.

Unseen, it consumed me softly, ever so softly, until my last blades of flames were blown into the oblivion leaving behind a storm of wisps that became one with the indiscriminate smoke, eternally wafting, riding the air.